


The (Grand)Kids Are All Right

by misura



Category: Reign of Fire (2002)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Community: smallfandomfest, Family, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The (Grand)Kids Are All Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



> prompt: _Quinn/Creedy & Jared, family_

_"There's someone here I think you want to see,"_ Jared'd said, barely five minutes after Quinn'd come stumbling into the place that's not going to be home for a while yet. (Too many memories, and too little assurances it can't ever happen again.)

 _"I'm tired,"_ Quinn had replied, because he was. _"Can it wait?"_ Stupid question, because Jared wasn't an idiot. (Creedy would have pointed this out to him - once Jared would have moved out of earshot, of course, because it would never do to give the kid an ego.)

Jared had shrugged by way of saying: _"Your call,"_ or possibly _"Your loss,"_ or even, if he was feeling particularly cheeky today: _"Your stupid choice to make, since it's not as if you're my dad or anything"_.

 _"Okay then,"_ Quinn'd said. _"Where?"_

He genuinely hadn't known who it could be. Alex was gone - and even if she'd changed her mind, she'd never have been able to beat him here, or not without his noticing the helicopter, anyway. Van Zan was dead. Eddie was dead. A whole lot of people were dead.

Quinn still felt it had almost been worth it. Almost.

Jared pointed the way.

Quinn considered changing his mind at the last moment, then figured what the hell - might as well get it over with. With any luck, he'd get some nice new problems to solve. Take his mind off things. He'd always slept better worrying about the things he still needed to do than he had worrying about the things that nobody could do anything about anymore.

 

It was Creedy.

Quinn felt close to fainting, which would have been embarrassing, really; a grown man fainting. Creedy'd have teased him about it for years. (Much better than the alternative, of course.)

"Hi," Creedy said, and his voice sounded a little bit rougher than usual.

Quinn felt - well, no, crying would definitely not be any better than fainting in the embarrassment department. "Creedy," he said.

"Guess it wasn't my time yet."

Quinn considered kissing him. Not particularly embarrassing - provided that Creedy would be up for it, as opposed to, say, flattered but really not interested in Quinn _that_ way.

(Rachel claimed she'd heard Creedy call out Quinn's name while he was sleeping. Dreaming, most likely. More than once.)

(Rachel was a romantic at heart, and entirely too observant.)

"I love you," he said.

Creedy grinned. "I know," he replied.

 

Really, Quinn mused, you'd have thought that with the dragons and all, one of them would have figured it out a bit sooner. Taken the plunge, so to speak - seized the day.

He felt as if he'd wasted rather a lot of time looking without touching.

"You'd never have gotten anything done," Creedy said, promptly as you pleased, the moment Quinn shared this idea with him.

"Hey," Quinn said, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say that while Creedy was definitely hot and Quinn enjoyed having sex with him very much, he wouldn't have let those two things distract him from the things that needed to get done.

"Well, I wouldn't have gotten a whole lot done either." Creedy's tone suggested this should be taken as a soothing not-quite-apology. "Much better to wait for a time like this."

"There's still plenty to do." They appeared to have managed survival, for now. To rebuild human civilization though - that would take a lot of time and hard work. Quinn wasn't even sure if it could be done at all. "We can't just sit around on our arses all day."

"Waste of a pair of perfectly good arses," Creedy agreed. "Much better things to do with them."

(Quinn would have granted him the point regardless, but he supposed there was no reason to refuse a hands-on demonstration by way of additional proof.)

 

Food was still a problem, even with dragon sightings becoming rarer and rarer.

There were fewer mouths to feed than there had been (Quinn looked at Creedy, working a few feet away, and firmly refused to feel guilty over being glad that of all of them, Creedy'd been the one to survive). There were also fewer strong, _adult_ hands to get the work done, though.

Jared stopped glancing at Quinn whenever someone asked him to make a decision. Quinn made a point of complaining about feeling ignored after two weeks, to be sure Jared would know it for what it was. (Praise. That slap on the shoulder neither of them would have been quite comfortable with.)

"He's doing well," Creedy said.

"He's doing all right," Quinn allowed. He'd always looked up to his dad, for some reason that no longer seemed to make much sense now. Maybe it had been the distance; his mom'd been there for the good _and_ the bad, but his dad would only show up once in a while. With a present, usually.

"Well, as long as he knows how you feel."

"He knows," Quinn said. "We're family."

They really were, by now, he realized with a touch of surprise. Him and Jared and Quinn and all the kids. One big family, reasonably happy.

 

"Uncle," Creedy said, firmly.

Jared snorted. If he hadn't known better, Quinn would have thought Jared was acting like a - well, a teenager. A teenager who'd just discovered his dad's dating someone not his mother, to be precise.

(His mom'd brought home a guyfriend only once, maybe twice. Quinn hadn't liked it, hadn't really _understood_ , he supposed. Another one of those things it was too late to take back.)

"A crazy uncle."

"Two," Quinn said. He didn't much feel like getting involved in this particular argument right now, but if Creedy was going to elevate their status from grandpas to uncles, he wasn't above hitching a ride.

"What does that make me?" Jared asked. His poker face was cracking up - Creedy's good influence, Quinn figured. Hoped. He liked to believe a bit of sex (or, fine, a lot of sex) between friends wasn't something that would unsettle Jared.

"Our kid brother," Creedy said promptly, then sighed. "So young to take care of such a big family."

Jared glared at Quinn. "You could stop helping," he said.

Quinn smiled at him brightly.

"No, he really couldn't," Creedy said. Quinn wasn't sure whether or not that was supposed to be a compliment. Probably not.

They hadn't spotted any dragons for close to a month.

It was all beginning to look suspiciously much like a happy ending.


End file.
